TAMPA, Fla. — Ron Guidry does not show up to Yankees spring training for the free sunscreen. The left-hander who went 170-91 with a 3.29 ERA across 14 seasons in the Bronx works every day at camp as a guest instructor. He watches the young arms. He offers tips. And he takes the temperature of a franchise he loves.
On Saturday, Guidry shared what that temperature feels like. It was not warm. The 1978 Cy Young Award winner, a two-time World Series champion and one of the most respected voices in Yankees history, delivered a blunt assessment of life under Hal Steinbrenner.
His words carried extra weight because of who he is. Guidry is not a bomb-thrower. He is not on the outside looking in. He is at camp every single day, on good terms with the front office. When a man like that speaks up, you listen.
Guidry remembers a different kind of Yankees clubhouse
The Yankees have not won a World Series since 2009. That is 17 years without a title for the most decorated franchise in baseball. For the generation that played under George Steinbrenner, that kind of drought would have been unthinkable.
Guidry pitched for The Boss from 1975 through 1988. He won his two rings in 1977 and 1978, both against the Dodgers. He earned a Cy Young Award, five Gold Gloves and four All-Star selections. He was named co-captain of the Yankees in 1986, and his No. 49 hangs in Monument Park.
He knows what it felt like when winning was not optional. Steinbrenner the elder ran his clubhouse like a pressure cooker. Players feared those back-page headlines. They feared the owner’s voice on the other end of the phone. And that fear, Guidry believes, made them tougher.
“One way or another, you’d go looking for the newspaper every morning to see what George had to say,” Guidry said, per NJ.com’s Bob Klapisch.
“Today, it’s really calm (in the clubhouse). When I was playing, there was always tension, guys were always looking over their shoulders, like ‘what’s next?'”
Guidry calls today’s Yankees ‘boring,’ says George would have matched the Dodgers
Then came the word that cut deepest. Ron Guidry smiled as he compared the current era to the chaos he played through. He did not sugarcoat it.
“It’s actually boring this way,” Guidry said. “The players today don’t have to deal with the tension. They’ve never experienced that.”
Boring. That is not a word Yankees fans expect to hear about their team. Not from a legend who still wears the interlocking NY on his chest every February. But Guidry was not finished.
He turned his attention to the Dodgers, who have won back-to-back World Series titles and now carry the highest luxury-tax payroll in baseball at more than $400 million. The Yankees sit third, behind both the Dodgers and the crosstown Mets.
“George would’ve found a way to match the Dodgers,” Guidry said. “Whatever they did, he would’ve done better. If they signed one star, George would’ve signed two. He would’ve tried his best to stop what’s going on.”
The Dodgers added outfielder Kyle Tucker on a four-year, $240 million deal this winter and signed closer Edwin Diaz away from the Mets. They have nine players on contracts worth at least $20 million per year. Their tax payroll sits roughly $96 million above the next closest team. George Steinbrenner, Guidry insisted, would never have let that happen.
The financial gap between the Yankees and Dodgers is real
Guidry’s sentiment is easy to understand. But the financial landscape of baseball has shifted dramatically since George Steinbrenner’s passing in 2010.
The Dodgers are backed by Guggenheim Baseball Management, an equity and investment empire with estimated assets in the range of $330 billion to $345 billion. That kind of capital allows them to operate in a stratosphere no other franchise can reach. Their 2025 total spending hit $515 million when luxury tax penalties were included, according to MLB.com. Their tax bill alone was larger than the payrolls of more than half the league.
The Yankees still spend big. Their projected 2026 luxury-tax payroll sits north of $290 million, well above the $244 million tax threshold. They are repeat offenders at the 50% tax rate. But the Dodgers are playing a different game entirely, and the gap between the two franchises has widened every year.
That gap may become a central talking point in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement. The current CBA expires after the 2026 season. Several owners have already raised questions about whether one ownership group should be able to leverage outside investment capital at a level that dwarfs even the biggest traditional spenders.
What Guidry admires most about The Boss
Guidry made it clear he was not trying to tear down Hal Steinbrenner. His praise for George was rooted in something deeper than payroll numbers.
“But George knew what he was doing,” Guidry said. “He’d wait to see if you’d stand up to him. Because if you had the guts to do that, then he knew you weren’t afraid of anyone. That’s the kind of player he wanted on his team.”
George Steinbrenner was also a visionary off the field. Along with Ted Turner, he helped pioneer regional sports networks. He created the YES Network because he refused to give away broadcast rights for free. He partnered with team president Randy Levine to build the new Yankee Stadium, filled with corporate suites that transformed the franchise’s revenue model.
That business sense, paired with a volcanic competitive streak, is what Guidry misses. George Steinbrenner hated losing. He made sure everyone around him hated it too.
When asked how The Boss would react to 17 years without a championship, Guidry grinned wide.
“George would not be happy right now,” he said. “You can be sure about that.”
Happy or not, the Yankees open their 2026 Grapefruit League season this week in Tampa. The Dodgers remain the betting favorites to win a third straight title. And somewhere in that gap between what the Yankees are and what they used to be, Ron Guidry’s words are going to linger.
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